Gargantua and Pantagruel eBook

Pan. But, of courtesy, be pleased to give
me some advice. I heartily beseech you, what
must I do?

Trouil. Even what thou wilt.

Pan. Wishy, washy; trolly, trolly.

Trouil. Do not invocate the name
of anything, I pray you.

Pan. In the name of God, let it be so!
My actions shall be regulated by the rule and square
of your counsel. What is it that you advise and
counsel me to do?

Trouil. Nothing.

Pan. Shall I marry?

Trouil. I have no hand in it.

Pan. Then shall I not marry?

Trouil. I cannot help it.

Pan. If I never marry, I shall never
be a cuckold.

Trouil. I thought so.

Pan. But put the case that I be
married.

Trouil. Where shall we put it?

Pan. Admit it be so, then, and take
my meaning in that sense.

Trouil. I am otherwise employed.

Pan. By the death of a hog, and mother of
a toad, O Lord! if I durst hazard upon a little fling
at the swearing game, though privily and under thumb,
it would lighten the burden of my heart and ease my
lights and reins exceedingly. A little patience
nevertheless is requisite. Well then, if I marry,
I shall be a cuckold.

Trouil. One would say so.

Pan. Yet if my wife prove a virtuous, wise,
discreet, and chaste woman, I shall never be cuckolded.

Trouil. I think you speak congruously.

Pan. Hearken.

Trouil. As much as you will.

Pan. Will she be discreet and chaste?
This is the only point I would be resolved in.

Trouil. I question it.

Pan. You never saw her?

Trouil. Not that I know of.

Pan. Why do you then doubt of that
which you know not?

Trouil. For a cause.

Pan. And if you should know her.

Trouil. Yet more.

Pan. Page, my pretty little darling, take
here my cap,—­I give it thee. Have
a care you do not break the spectacles that are in
it. Go down to the lower court. Swear
there half an hour for me, and I shall in compensation
of that favour swear hereafter for thee as much as
thou wilt. But who shall cuckold me?

Trouil. Somebody.

Pan. By the belly of the wooden horse at Troy,
Master Somebody, I shall bang, belam thee, and claw
thee well for thy labour.

Trouil. You say so.

Pan. Nay, nay, that Nick in the dark cellar,
who hath no white in his eye, carry me quite away
with him if, in that case, whensoever I go abroad
from the palace of my domestic residence, I do not,
with as much circumspection as they use to ring mares
in our country to keep them from being sallied by
stoned horses, clap a Bergamasco lock upon my wife.